The farmer looked fondly at his second wife as he said this, and she

blushed and smiled upon him with responsive tenderness. I fancy a

woman's blushes and smiles wear longer in these calm solitudes than

amid the tumult and clamour of a great city.

Finding my host inclined to dwell upon the past, I ventured to hazard

an indirect endeavour to obtain some information respecting that entry

in the Bible which had excited my curiosity.

"Miss Susan Meynell died unmarried, I believe?" I said. "I see her

death recorded here, but she is described by her Christian name only."

"Ah, very like," replied Mr. Mercer, with an air of indifference, which

I perceived to be assumed. "Yes, my poor Molly's aunt Susan died

unmarried."

"And in London? I had been given to understand that she died in

Yorkshire."

I blushed for my own impertinence as I pressed this inquiry. What right

had I to be given to understand anything about these honest Meynells? I

saw poor uncle Joe's disconcerted face, and I felt that the hunter of

an heir-at-law is apt to become a very obnoxious creature.

"Susan Meynell died in London--the poor lass died in London," replied

Joseph Mercer, gravely; "and now we'll drop that subject, if you

please, my lad. It isn't a pleasant one."

After this I could no longer doubt that there was some painful story

involved in those two deprecating sentences of the gospel.

It was some time before uncle Joe was quite his own jovial and rather

noisy self again, and on this evening we had no whist. I bade my

friends good night a little earlier than usual, and departed, after

having obtained permission to take a tracing of the fly-leaf as soon as

possible.

On this night the starlit sky and lonesome moor seemed to have lost

their soothing power. There was a new fever in my mind. The simple plan

of the future which I had mapped out for myself was suddenly shattered.

The Charlotte of to-night--heiress-at-law to an enormous fortune--ward

in Chancery--claimant against the Crown--was a very different person

from the simple maid "whom there were none"--or only a doating

simpleton in the person of the present writer--"to praise, and very few

to love."

The night before last I had hoped so much; to-night hope had forsaken

me. It seemed as if a Titan's hand had dug a great pit between me and

the woman I loved--a pit as deep as the grave.

Philip Sheldon might have consented to give me his stepdaughter

unpossessed of a sixpence; but would he give me his stepdaughter with a

hundred thousand pounds for her fortune? Alas! no; I know the

Sheldonian intellect too well to be fooled by any hope so wild and

baseless. The one bright dream of my misused life faded from me in the

hour in which I discovered my dearest girl's claim to the Haygarthian

inheritance. But I am not going to throw up the sponge before the fight

is over. Time enough to die when I am lying face downward in the

ensanguined mire, and feel the hosts of the foemen trampling above my

shattered carcass. I will live in the light of my Charlotte's smiles

while I can, and for the rest--"_Il ne faut pas dire, fontaine, je ne

boirai pas de ton eau_." There is no cup so bitter that a man dare say,

I will not drain it to the very dregs. "What must be, shall be--that's

a certain text;" and in the mean time _carpe diem_. I am all a Bohemian

again.

_Nov. 5th_. After a day's delay I have obtained my tracing-paper, and

made two tracings of the entries in the Meynell Bible. How intercourse

with the Sheldonian race inclines one to the duplication of documents!

I consider the copying-press of modern civilization the supreme

incarnation of man's distrust of his fellow-men.

I spent this afternoon and evening with my dear love--my last evening

in Yorkshire. To-morrow I shall see my Sheldon, and inform him of the

very strange termination which has come to my researches. Will he

communicate at once with his brother? Will he release me from my oath

of secrecy? There is nothing of the masonic secretiveness in my

organisation, and I am very weary of the seal that has been set upon my

unwary lips. Will Charlotte be told that she is the reverend

intestate's next of kin? These are questions which I ask myself as I

sit in the stillness of my room at the Magpie, scribbling this wretched

diary of mine, while the church clock booms three solemn strokes in the

distance.

O, why did not the reverend intestate marry his housekeeper, and make a

will, like other honest citizens, and leave my Charlotte to walk the

obscure byways of honest poverty with me? I do believe that I could

have been honest; I do believe that I could have been brave and true

and steadfast for her dear sake. But it is the office of man to

propose, while the Unseen disposes. Perhaps such a youth as mine admits

of no redemption. I have written circulars for Horatio Paget. I have

been the willing remorseless tool of a man who never eats his dinner

without inflicting a wrong upon his fellow-creatures. Can a few moments

of maudlin sentimentality, a vague yearning for something brighter and

better, a brief impulse towards honesty, inspired by a woman's innocent

eyes--can so little virtue in the present atone for so much guilt in

the past? Alas! I fear not.

I had one last brief _tête-à-tête_ with my dear girl while I took the

tracing from the old Bible. She sat watching me, and distracting me

more or less while I worked; and despite the shadow of doubt that has

fallen upon me, I could not be otherwise than happy in her sweet

company.

When I came to the record of Susan Meynell's death, my Charlotte's

manner changed all at once from her accustomed joyousness to a pensive

gravity.

"I was very sorry you spoke of Susan Meynell to uncle Joseph," she

said, thoughtfully.

"But why sorry, my dear?"

I had some vague notion as to the cause of this sorrow; but the

instincts of the chase impelled me to press the subject. Was I not

bound to know every secret in the lives of Matthew Haygarth's

descendants?

"There is a very sad story connected with my aunt Susan--she was my

great-aunt, you know," said Charlotte, with a grave earnest face. "She

went away from home, and there was great sorrow. I cannot talk of the

story, even to you, Valentine, for there seems something sacred in

these painful family secrets. My poor aunt Susan left all her friends,

and died many years afterwards in London."

"She was known to have died unmarried?" I asked. This would be an

important question from George Sheldon's point of sight.

"Yes," Charlotte replied, blushing crimson.

That blush told me a great deal.

"There was some one concerned in this poor lady's sorrow," I said;

"some one to blame for all her unhappiness."

"There was."

"One whom she loved and trusted, perhaps?"

"Whom she loved and trusted only too well. O, Valentine, must not that

be terrible? To confide with all your heart in the person you love, and

to find him base and cruel! If my poor aunt had not believed Montagu

Kingdon to be true and honourable, she would have trusted her friends a

little, instead of trusting so entirely in him. O, Valentine, what am I

telling you? I cannot bear to cast a shadow on the dead."

"My dear love, do you think I cannot pity this injured lady? Do you

think I am likely to play the Pharisee, and be eager to bespatter the

grave of this poor sufferer? I can almost guess the story which you

shrink from telling me--it is one of those sad histories so often

acted, so often told. Your aunt loved a person called Montagu

Kingdon--her superior in station, perhaps?"

I looked at Charlotte as I said this, and her face told me that I had

guessed rightly.

"This Montagu Kingdon admired and loved her," I said. "He seemed eager

to make her his wife, but no doubt imposed secrecy as to his

intentions. She accepted his word as that of a true-hearted lover and a

gentleman, and in the end had bitter reason to repent her confidence.

That is an outline of the story, is it not, Charlotte?"

"I am sure that it was so. I am sure that when she left Newhall she

went away to be married," cried Charlotte, eagerly; "I have seen a

letter that proves it--to me, at least. And yet I have heard even mamma

speak harshly of her--so long dead and gone off the face of this

earth--as if she had deliberately chosen the sad fate which came to

her."

"Is it not possible that Mr. Kingdon did marry Miss Meynell, after all?"

"No," replied Charlotte, very sadly; "there is no hope of that. I have

seen a letter written by my poor aunt years afterwards--a letter that

tells much of the cruel truth; and I have heard that Mr. Kingdon came

back to Yorkshire and married a rich lady during my aunt's lifetime."

"I should like to see that letter," I said, involuntarily.

"Why, Valentine?" asked my darling, looking at me with sorrowful,

wondering eyes, "To me it seems so painful to talk of these things: it

is like reopening an old wound."

"But if the interests of other people require--" I began, in a very

blundering manner.

"Whose interest can be served by my showing you my poor aunt's letter?

It would seem like an act of dishonour to the dead."

What could I say after this--bound hand and foot as I am by my promise

to Sheldon?

After a long talk with my sweet one, I borrowed uncle Joe's dog-cart,

and spun across to Barngrave, where I found the little church, beneath

whose gray old roof Charlotte Meynell plighted her troth to James

Halliday. I took a copy of all entries in the register concerning Mrs.

Meynell Halliday and her children, and then went back to Newhall to

restore the dog-cart, and to take my last Yorkshire tea at the

hospitable old farm-house.

To-morrow I am off to Barlingford, fifteen miles from this village, to

take more copies from registries concerning my sweet young heiress--the

registries of her father's marriage, and her own birth. After that I

think my case will be tolerably complete, and I can present myself to

Sheldon in the guise of a conqueror.

Is it not a great conquest to have made? Is it not almost an act of

chivalry for these prosaic days to go forth into the world as a private

inquirer, and win a hundred thousand pounds for the lady of one's love?

And yet I wish any one rather than my Charlotte were the lineal

descendant of Matthew Haygarth.

_Nov. 10th_. Here I am in London once more, with my Sheldon in

ecstatics, and our affairs progressing marvellously well, as he informs

me; but with that ponderous slowness peculiar to all mortal affairs in

which the authorities of the realm are in any way concerned.

My work is finished. Hawkehurst the genealogist and antiquarian sinks

into Hawkehurst the private individual. I have no more to do but to

mind my own business and await the fruition of time in the shape of my

reward.

Can I accept three thousand pounds for giving my dearest her

birthright? Can I take payment for a service done to her? Surely not:

and, on the other hand, can I continue to woo my sweet one, conscious

that she is the rightful claimant to a great estate? Can I take

advantage of her ignorance, and may it not be said that I traded on my

secret knowledge?

Before leaving Yorkshire, I stole one more day from the Sheldon

business, in order to loiter just a few hours longer in that northern

Arcadia called Newhall farm. What assurance have I that I shall ever

re-enter that pleasant dwelling? What hold have I, a wanderer and

vagabond, on the future which respectable people map out for themselves

with such mathematical precision? And even the respectable people are

sometimes out in their reckoning. To snatch the joys of to-day must

always be the policy of the adventurer. So I took one more happy

afternoon at Newhall. Nor was the afternoon entirely wasted; for, in

the course of my farewell visit, I heard more of poor Susan Meynell's

history from honest uncle Joseph. He told me the story during an

after-dinner walk, in which he took me the round of his pig-styes and

cattle-sheds for the last time, as if he would fain have had them leave

their impress on my heart.

"You may see plenty of cattle in Yorkshire," he remarked, complacently,

"but you won't see many beasts to beat that."

He pointed to a brown and mountainous mass of inert matter, which he

gave me to understand was something in the way of cattle.

"Would you like to see him standing?" he asked, giving the mass a prod

with the handle of his walking-stick, which to my cockney mind seemed

rather cruel, but which, taken from an agricultural point of view, was

no doubt the correct thing. "He _can_ stand. Coom up, Brownie!"

I humbly entreated that the ill-used mass might be allowed to sprawl in

undisturbed misery.

"Thorley!" exclaimed Mr. Mercer, laying his finger significantly

against the side of his unpretending nose.

I had not the faintest comprehension of my revered uncle-in-law's

meaning; but I said, "O, indeed!" with the accents of admiration.

"Thorley's Condiment," said my uncle. "You'll see some fine animate at

the Cattle-show; but if you see a two-year-old ox to beat him, my name

is not Joe Mercer."

After this I had to pay my respects to numerous specimens of the bovine

race, all more or less prostrate under the burden of superabundant

flesh, all seeming to cry aloud for the treatment of some Banting of

the agricultural world.

After we had "done" the cattle-sheds, with heroic resignation on my

part, and with enthusiasm on the part of Mr. Mercer, we went a long way

to see some rarities in the way of mutton, which commodity was to be

found cropping the short grass on a distant upland.

With very little appreciation of the zoological varieties, and with the

consciousness that my dear one was sitting in the farm-house parlour,

wondering at my prolonged absence, this excursion could not be

otherwise than a bore to me. But it was a small thing to sacrifice my

own pleasure for once in a way, when by so doing I might gratify the

kindest of men and of uncles; so I plodded briskly across the fields

with the friendly farmer.

I had my reward; for, in the course of this walk, Mr. Mercer gave me

the history of poor Susan Meynell.

"I didn't care to talk about the story the other night before the young

lass," he said, gravely; "for her heart's so full of pity and

tenderness, pretty dear, that any tale such as that is like to upset

her. But the story's known to almost all the folks in these parts; so

there's no particular reason against my telling it to you. I've heard

my poor mother talk of Susan Meynell many a time. She was a regular

beauty, it seems; prettier than her sister Charlotte, and she was a

pretty woman, as you may guess by looking at _our_ Charlotte, who is

thought the image of her grandmother. But Susan was one of those

beauties that you don't see very often--more like a picture than flesh

and blood. The gentry used to turn round to look at her at Barngrave

church, I've heard my mother say. She was a rare one for dress, too;

for she had a few hundreds left her by her father and mother, who had

both of them been very well-to-do people. The mother was daughter to

William Rand, of Barngrave, a man who farmed above a thousand acres of

his own land; and the father kept a carpet warehouse in

Aldersgate-street."

This information I received with respectful deference, and a

hypocritical assumption of ignorance respecting Miss Meynell's

antecedents.

Mr. Mercer paused to take breath, and then continued the story after

his own rambling fashion.

"Well, my lad, what with her fine dress, and what with her pretty

looks, Susan Meynell seems to have thought a little too much of

herself; so that when Montagu Kingdon, of Kingdon-place, younger

brother to Lord Durnsville, fell in love with her, and courted her--not

exactly openly, but with the knowledge of her sister, Mrs.

Halliday--she thought it no more than natural that he should intend to

make her his wife. Mr. Kingdon was ten years older than Susan, and had

served in Spain, and had not borne too good a character abroad. He had

been in a hard-drinking cavalry regiment, and had spent all his money,

and sold out directly the war was over. There was very little of all

this known down hereabouts, where Mr. Kingdon stood very high, on

account of his being Lord Durnsville's brother. But it was known that

he was poor, and that the Durnsville estates were heavily encumbered

into the bargain."

"Then this gentleman would have been no grand match for Miss Meynell,

if--"

"If he had married her? No, my lad; and it might have been the

knowledge of his poverty that made Susan and her sister think less of

the difference between his station and the girl's. The two women

favoured him, anyhow; and they kept the secret from James Halliday, who

was a regular upstraight-and-downright kind of fellow, as proud as any

lord in his own way. The secret was kept safe enough for some time, and

Mr. Kingdon was always dropping in at Newhall when Jim was out of the

way; but folks in these parts are very inquisitive, and, lonesome as

our place is, there are plenty of people go by between Monday and

Saturday; so by-and-by it got to be noticed that there was very often a

gentleman's horse standing at Newhall gate, with the bridle tied to one

of the gate-posts; and those that knew anything, knew that the horse

belonged to Montagu Kingdon. A friend of Jim Halliday's told him as

much one day, and warned him that Mr. Kingdon was a scamp, and was said

to have a Spanish wife somewhere beyond seas. This was quite enough for

James Halliday, who flew into a roaring rage at the notion of any man,

most of all Lord Durnsville's brother, going to his house and courting

his sister-in-law in secret. It was at Barngrave he was told this, one

market-day, as he was lounging with his friends in the old yard of the

Black Bull inn, where the corn exchange used to be held in those days.

He called for his horse the next minute, and left the town at a gallop.

When he came to Newhall, he found Montagu Kingdon's chestnut mare tied

to the gate-post, and he found Mr. Kingdon himself, dawdling about the

garden with Miss Meynell."

"And then I suppose there was a scene?" I suggested, with unfeigned

interest in this domestic story.

"Well, I believe there was, my lad. I've heard all about it from my

poor Molly, who had the story from her mother. James Halliday didn't

mince matters; he gave Mr. Kingdon a bit of his mind, in his own rough

outspoken way, and told him it would be the worse for him if he ever

crossed the threshold of Newhall gate again. 'If you meant well by that

foolish girl, you wouldn't come sneaking here behind my back,' he said;

'but you don't mean well by her, and you've a Spanish wife hidden away

somewhere in the Peninsula.' Mr. Kingdon gave the lie to this; but he

said he shouldn't stoop to justify himself to an unmannerly yeoman. 'If

you were a gentleman,' he said, 'you should pay dearly for your

insolence.' 'I'm ready to pay any price you like,' answered James

Halliday, as bold as brass; 'but as you weren't over fond of fighting

abroad, where there was plenty to be got for it, I don't suppose you

want to fight at home, where there's nothing to be got for it.'"

"And did Susan Meynell hear this?" I asked. I could fancy this

ill-fated girl standing by and looking on aghast while hard things were

said to the man she loved, while the silver veil of sweet romance was

plucked so roughly from the countenance of her idol by an angry

rustic's rude hand.

"Well, I don't quite know whether she heard all," answered Mr. Mercer,

thoughtfully. "Of course, James Halliday told his wife all about the

row afterwards. He was very kind to his sister-in-law, in spite of her

having deceived him; and he talked to her very seriously, telling her

all he had heard in Barngrave against Montagu Kingdon. She listened to

him quietly enough, but it was quite clear that she didn't believe a

word he said. 'I know you have heard all that, James,' she said; 'but

the people who said it knew they were not telling the truth. Lord

Durnsville and his brother are not popular in the country, and there

are no falsehoods too cruel for the malice of his enemies.' She

answered him with some such fine speech as that, and when the next

morning came she was gone."

"She eloped with Mr. Kingdon?"

"Yes. She left a letter for her sister, full of romantic stuff about

loving him all the better because people spoke ill of him; regular

woman's talk, you know, bless their poor silly hearts!" murmured Mr.

Mercer, with tender compassion. "She was going to London to be married

to Mr. Kingdon, she wrote. They were to be married at the old church in

the city where she had been christened, and she was going to stay with

an old friend--a young woman who had once been her brother's

sweetheart, and who was married to a butcher in Newgate-market--till

the bans were given out, or the license bought. The butcher's wife had

a country-house out at Edmonton, and it was there Susan was going to

stay."

"All that seemed straightforward enough," said I.

"Yes," replied uncle Joe; "but if Mr. Kingdon had meant fairly by Susan

Meynell, it would have been as easy for him to marry her at Barngrave

as in London. He was as poor as a church mouse, but he was his own

master, and there was no one to prevent him doing just what he pleased.

This is about what James Halliday thought, I suppose; for he tore off

to London, as fast as post-horses could carry him, in pursuit of his

wife's sister and Mr. Kingdon. But though he made inquiries all along

the road he could not hear that they had passed before him, and for the

best of all reasons. He went to the butcher's house at Edmonton; but

there he found no trace of Susan Meynell, except a letter posted in

Yorkshire, on the day of the row between James and Mr. Kingdon, telling

her intention of visiting her old friend within the next few days, and

hinting at an approaching marriage. There was the letter announcing the

visit, but the visitor had not come."

"But the existence of that letter bears witness that Miss Meynell

believed in the honesty of her lover's intentions."

"To be sure it does, poor lass," answered Mr. Mercer pensively. "She

believed in the word of a scoundrel, and she was made to pay dearly for

her simplicity. James Halliday did all he could to find her. He

searched London through, as far as any man can search such a place as

London; but it was no use, and for a very good reason, as I said

before. The end of it was, he was obliged to go back to Newhall no

wiser than when he started."

"And was nothing further ever discovered?" I asked eagerly, for I felt

that this was just one of those family complications from which all

manner of legal difficulties might arise.

"Don't be in a hurry, my lad," answered uncle Joe; "wickedness is sure

to come to light sooner or later. Three years after this poor young

woman ran away there was a drunken groom dismissed from Lord

Durnsville's stable; and what must he needs do but come straight off to

James Halliday, to vent his spite against his master, and perhaps to

curry favour at Newhall. 'You shouldn't have gone to London to look for

the young lady, Muster Halliday,' he said; 'you should have gone the

other way. I know a man as drove Mr. Kingdon and your wife's sister

across country to Hull with two of my lord's own horses, stopping to

bait on the way. They went aboard ship at Hull, Mr. Kingdon and the

young lady--a ship that was bound for foreign parts.' This is what the

groom said; but it was little good knowing it now. There'd been

advertisements in the papers beseeching her to come back; and

everything had been done that could be done, and all to no end. A few

years after this back comes Mr. Kingdon as large as life, married to

some dark-faced, frizzy-haired lady, whose father owned half the

Indies, according to people's talk: but he fought very shy of James

Halliday; but when they did meet one day at the covert side, Jim rode

up to the honourable gentleman and asked him what he had done with

Susan Meynell. Those that saw the meeting say that Montagu Kingdon

turned as white as a ghost when he saw Jim Halliday riding up to him on

his big, raw-boned horse; but nothing came of the quarrel. Mr. Kingdon

did not live many years to enjoy the money his frizzy-haired

West-Indian lady brought him. He died before his brother, Lord

Durnsville, and left neither chick nor child to inherit his money, nor

yet the Durnsville title, which was extinct on the death of the

viscount."

"And what of the poor girl?"

"Ay, poor lass, what of her? It was fourteen years after she left her

home before her sister got so much as a line to say she was in the land

of the living. When a letter did come at last, it was a very melancholy

one. The poor creature wrote to her sister to say she was in London,

alone and penniless, and, as she thought, dying."

"And the sister went to her?"

I remembered that deprecating sentence in the family Bible, written in

a woman's hand.

"That she did, good honest soul, as fast as she could travel, carrying

a full purse along with her. She found poor Susan at an inn near

Aldersgate-street--the old quarter, you see, that she'd known in her

young days. Mrs. Halliday meant to have brought the poor soul back to

Yorkshire, and had settled it all with Jim; but it was too late for

anything of that kind. She found Susan dying, wandering in her mind off

and on, but just able to recognise her sister, and to ask forgiveness

for having trusted to Montagu Kingdon, instead of taking counsel from

those that wished her well."

"Was that all?" I asked presently.

Mr. Mercer made long pauses in the course of his narrative, during

which we walked briskly on; he pondering on those past events, I

languishing for further information.

"Well, lad, that was about all. Where Susan had been in all those

years, or what she had been doing, was more than Mrs. Halliday could

find out. Of late she had been living somewhere abroad. The clothes she

had last worn were of foreign make, very poor and threadbare; and there

was one little box in her room at the inn that had been made at Rouen,

for the name of a Rouen trunkmaker was on the inside of the lid. There

were no letters or papers of any kind in the box; so you see there was

no way of finding out what the poor creature's life had been. All her

sister could do was to stay with her and comfort her to the last, and

to see that she was quietly laid to rest in a decent grave. She was

buried in a quiet little city churchyard, somewhere where there are

green trees among the smoke of the chimney-pots. Montagu Kingdon had

been dead some years when that happened."

"Is that last letter still in existence?" I asked.

"Yes; my first wife kept it with the rest of her family letters and

papers. Dorothy takes care of them now. We country folks set store by

those sort of things, you know."

I would fain have asked Mr. Mercer to let me see this last letter

written by Susan Meynell; but what excuse could I devise for so doing?

I was completely fettered by my promise to George Sheldon, and could

offer no reasonable pretence for my curiosity.

There was one point which I was bound to push home in the interests of

my Sheldon, or, shall I not rather say, of my Charlotte? That

all-important point was the question of marriage or no marriage. "You

feel quite clear as to the fact that Montagu Kingdon never did marry

this young woman?" I said.

"Well, yes," replied uncle Joe; "that was proved beyond doubt, I'm

sorry to say. Mr. Kingdon never could have dared to come back here with

his West-Indian wife in poor Susan Meynell's lifetime if he had really

married her."

"And how about the lady he was said to have married in Spain?"

"I can't say anything about that. It may have been only a scandal, or,

if there was a marriage, it may have been illegal. The Kingdons were

Protestants, and the Spaniards are all papists, I suppose. A marriage

between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic wouldn't be binding."

"Not upon such a man as this Kingdon."

It seems more than probable that the opinion arrived at by this poor

soul's friends must be correct, and that Montagu Kingdon was a

scoundrel. But how about Susan Meynell's after-life?--the fourteen

years in which she was lost sight of? May she not have married some one

else than Mr. Kingdon? and may she not have left heirs who will arise

in the future to dispute my darling's claim?

Is it a good thing to have a great inheritance? The day has been when

such a question as that could not by any possibility have shaped itself

in my mind. Ah! what is this subtle power called love, which worketh

such wondrous changes in the human heart? Surely the miracle of the

cleansed leper is in some manner typical of this transformation. The

emanation of divine purity encircled the leper with its supernal

warmth, and the scales fell away beneath that mysterious influence. And

so from the pure heart of a woman issues a celestial fire which burns

the plague-spot out of the sinner's breast. Ah, how I languish to be at

my darling's feet, thanking her for the cure she has wrought!

I have given my Sheldon the story of Susan Meynell's life, as I had it

from uncle Joseph. He agrees with me as to the importance of Susan's

last letter, but even that astute creature does not see a way to

getting the document in his hands without letting Mr. Mercer more or

less into our secret.

"I might tell this man Mercer some story about a little bit of money

coming to his niece, and get at Susan Meynell's letter that way," he

said; "but whatever I told him would be sure to get round to Philip

somehow or other, and I don't want to put him on the scent."

My Sheldon's legal mind more than ever inclines to caution, now that he

knows the heiress of the Haygarths is so nearly allied to his brother

Philip.

"I'll tell you what it is, Hawkehurst," he said to me, after we had

discussed the business in all its bearings, "there are not many people

I'm afraid of, but I don't mind owning to you that I am afraid of my

brother Phil. He has always walked over my head; partly because he can

wear his shirt-front all through business hours without creasing it,

which I can't, and partly because he's--well--more unscrupulous than I

am."

He paused meditatively, and I too was meditative; for I could not

choose but wonder what it was to be more unscrupulous than George

Sheldon.

"If he were to get an inkling of this affair," my patron resumed

presently, "he'd take it out of our hands before you could say Jack

Robinson--supposing anybody ever wanted to say Jack Robinson, which

they don't--and he'd drive a bargain with us, instead of our driving a

bargain with him."

My friend of Gray's Inn has a pleasant way of implying that our

interests are coequal in this affair. I caught him watching me

curiously once or twice during our last interview, when Charlotte's

name was mentioned. Does he suspect the truth, I wonder?

_Nov. 12th_. I had another interview with my patron yesterday, and

rather a curious interview, though not altogether unsatisfactory.

George Sheldon has been making good use of his time since my return

from Yorkshire.

"I don't think we need have any fear of opposition from children or

grandchildren of Susan Meynell," he said; "I have found the registry of

her interment in the churchyard of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. She is

described in that registry by her maiden name, and there is a plain

headstone in a corner of the ground, inscribed with the name of Susan

Meynell, who died July 14th, 1835, much lamented; and then the text

about 'the one sinner that repenteth,' and so on," said Mr. Sheldon, as

if he did not care to dwell on so hackneyed a truism.

"But," I began, "she might have been married, in spite of--"

"Yes, she might," replied my Sheldon, captiously; "but then, you see,

the probability is that she wasn't. If she had been married, she would

have told her sister as much in that last letter, or she would have

said as much when they met."

"But she was delirious."

"Not all the time. She was sensible enough to talk about her sorrow for

the past, and so on; and she must have been sensible enough to have

spoken of her children, if she had ever had any. Besides, if she had

been married, she would scarcely have been wandering about the world in

that miserable manner, unless her husband was an uncommonly bad lot.

No, Hawkehurst, depend upon it, we've nothing to fear in that quarter.

The person we have to fear is that precious brother of mine."

"You talked the other day about driving a bargain with him," I said; "I

didn't quite understand your meaning. The fortune can only be claimed

by Char--Miss Halliday, and your brother has no legal authority to

dispose of her money."

"Of course not," answered my employer, with contemptuous impatience of

my dulness; "but my brother Phil is not the man to wait for legal

power. His ideas will be Miss Halliday's ideas in this business. When

my case is ripe for action, I shall make my bargain--half the fortune

to be mine from the day of its recovery. A deed containing these

conditions must be executed by Charlotte Halliday before I hand over a

single document relating to the case. Now, as matters stand at

present," he went on, looking very fixedly at me, "her execution of

that deed would rest with Philip."

"And when shall you make your overtures to Mr. Sheldon?" I asked, at a

loss to understand that intent look.

"Not until the last links of the chain are put together. Not before I'm

ready to make my first move on the Chancellor's chessboard. Perhaps not

at all."

"How do you mean?"

"If I can tide over for a little time, I may throw Philip overboard

altogether, and get some one else to manage Miss Halliday for me."

"What do you mean?"

"I'll tell you, Hawkehurst," answered my patron, resting his elbows on

the table by which we were sitting, and looking me through with those

penetrating black eyes of his. "My brother Phil played me a shabby

trick a few years ago, which I have not forgotten or forgiven. So I

shouldn't mind paying him out in some of his own coin. Beyond which, I

tell you again, I don't like the idea of his having a finger in this

business. Where that kind of man's finger can go, his whole hand will

follow; and if once that hand fastens on John Haygarth's money, it'll

be bad times for you and me. Miss Halliday counts for exactly nothing

in my way of reckoning. If her stepfather told her to sign away half a

million, she'd scribble her name at the bottom of the paper, and press

her pretty little thumb upon the wafer, without asking a single

question as to the significance of the document. And, of course, she'd

be still less inclined to make objections if it was her husband who

asked her to execute the deed. Aha! my young friend, how is it you grow

first red and then white when I mention Miss Halliday's husband?"

I have no doubt that I did indeed blanch when that portentous word was

uttered in conjunction with my darling's name. Mr. Sheldon leant a

little further across the table, and his hard black eyes penetrated a

little deeper into the recesses of my foolish heart.

"Valentine Hawkehurst," he said, "shall we throw my brother Phil

overboard altogether? Shall you and I go shares in this fortune?"

"Upon my word and honour I don't understand you," I said, in all

sincerity.

"You mean that you won't understand me," answered George Sheldon,

impatiently; "but I'll make myself pretty clear presently; and as your

own interest is at stake, you'll be very unlike the rest of your

species if you don't find it easy enough to understand me. When first I

let you in for the chance of a prize out of this business, neither you

nor I had the slightest idea that circumstances would throw the

rightful claimant to the Haygarth estate so completely into our way. I

had failed so many times with other cases before I took up this case,

that it's a wonder I had the courage to work on. But, somehow or other,

I had a notion that this particular business would turn up trumps. The

way seemed a little clearer than it usually is; but not clear enough to

tempt Tom, Dick, and Harry. And then, again, I had learnt a good many

secrets from the experience of my failures. I was well up to my work. I

might have carried it on, and I ought to have carried it on, without

help; but I was getting worn out and lazy, so I let you into my secret,

having taken it into my head that I could venture to trust you."

"You didn't trust me further than you could help, my friend," I replied

with my usual candour. "You never told me the amount left by the

reverend intestate; but I heard that down at Ullerton. A half share in

a hundred thousand pounds is worth trying for, Mr. Sheldon."

"They call it a hundred thousand down there, do they?" asked the

lawyer, with charming innocence. "Those country people always deal in

high figures. However, I don't mind owning that the sum is a handsome

one, and if you and I play our cards wisely, we may push Philip out of

the game altogether, and share the plunder between us."

Again I was obliged to confess myself unable to grasp my employer's

meaning.

"Marry Charlotte Halliday out of hand," he said, bringing his eyes and

his elbows still nearer to me, until his bushy black whiskers almost

touched my face. "Marry her before Philip gets an inkling of this

affair, and then, instead of being made a tool of by him, she'll be

safe in your hands, and the money will be in your hands into the

bargain. Why, how you stare, man! Do you think I haven't seen how the

land lies between you two? Haven't I dined at Bayswater when you've

been there? and could any man with his wits about him see you two

sentimental young simpletons together _without_ seeing how things were

going on? You are in love with Charlotte, and Charlotte is in love with

you. What more natural than that you two should make a match of it?

Charlotte is her own mistress, and hasn't sixpence in the world that

any one but you and I know of; for, of course, my brother Phil will

continue to stick to every penny of poor old Tom's money. All you have

to do is to follow up the young lady; it's the course that would

suggest itself to any man in the same case, even if Miss Halliday were

the ugliest old harridan in Christendom, instead of being a very jolly

kind of girl, as girls go."

My employer said this with the tone of a man who had never considered

the genus girl a very interesting part of creation. I suppose I looked

at him rather indignantly; for he laughed as he resumed,--

"I'll say she's an angel, if you like," he said; "and if you think her

one, so much the better. You may consider it a very lucky thing that

you came in my way, and a still more lucky thing that Miss Halliday has

been silly enough to fall in love with you. I've heard of men being

born with silver spoons in their mouths; but I should think you must

have come into the world with a whole service of plate. However, that

is neither here nor there. Your policy will be to follow up your

advantages; and if you can persuade the young lady to change her name

for Hawkehurst on the quiet some fine morning, without stopping to ask

permission of her stepfather, or any one else, so much the better for

you, and so much the more agreeable to me. I'd rather do business with

you than with my brother Phil; and I shan't be sorry to cry quits with

that gentleman for the shabby trick he played me a few years ago."

My Sheldon's brow darkened as he said this, and the moody fit returned.

That old grudge which my patron entertains against his brother must

have relation to some very disagreeable business, if I may judge by

George Sheldon's manner.

Here was a position for me, Valentine Hawkehurst, soldier of fortune,

cosmopolitan adventurer, and child of the nomadic tribes who call

Bohemia their mother country! Already blest with the sanction of my

dear love's simple Yorkshire kindred, I was now assured of George

Sheldon's favour; nay, urged onward in my paradisiac path by that

unsentimental Mentor. The situation was almost too much for my

bewildered brain. Charlotte an heiress, and George Sheldon eager to

bring about my participation in the Haygarthian thousands!

And now I sit in my little room in Omega-street, pondering upon the

past, and trying to face the perplexities of the future.

Is this to be? Am I, so hopeless an outsider in the race of life, to

come in with a rush and win the prize which Fortune's first favourite

might envy? Can I hope or believe it? Can the Fates have been playing a

pleasant practical joke with me all this time, like those fairies who

decree that the young prince shall pass his childhood and youth in the

guise of a wild boar, only to be transformed into an Adonis at last by

the hand of the woman who is disinterested enough to love him despite

his formidable tusks and ungainly figure?

No! a thousand times no! The woman I love, and the fortune I have so

often desired, are not for me. Every man has his own especial Fates;

and the three sisters who take care of me are grim, hard-visaged,

harder-hearted spinsters, not to be mollified by propitiation, or by

the smooth tongue of the flatterer. The cup is very sweet, and it seems

almost within my grasp; but between that chalice of delight and the

lips that thirst for it, ah, what a gulf!

_Nov. 13th_. The above was written late at night, and under the

influence of my black dog. What an ill-conditioned cur he is, and how

he mouths and mangles the roses that bestrew his pathway, always bent

upon finding the worm at the core!

I kicked the brute out of doors this morning, on finding a letter from

my dear one lying in my plate. "Avaunt, aroint thee, foul fiend!" I

cried. "Thou art the veritable poodle in whose skin Mephistopheles

hides when bent on direst mischief. I will set the sign of the cross

upon my threshold, and thou shalt enter no more."

This is what I said to myself as I tore open Charlotte's envelope, with

its pretty little motto stamped on cream-coloured sealing-wax, "_Pensez

à moi._" Ah, love; "while memory holds a seat in this distracted

globe." I saw the eyes of my friend Horatio fixed upon me as I opened

my letter, and knew that my innermost sentiments were under inspection.

Prudence demands all possible caution where the noble Captain is

concerned. I cannot bring myself to put implicit faith in his account

of his business at Ullerton. He may have been there, as he says, on

some promoting spec; but our meeting in that town was, to say the

least, a strange coincidence, and I am not a believer in

coincidences--off the stage, where a gentleman invariably makes his

appearance directly his friends begin to talk about him.

I cannot forget my conviction that Jonah Goodge was bought over by a

rival investigator, and that Rebecca Haygarth's letters were tampered

with; nor can I refrain from connecting that shapely but well-worn

lavender glove with the person of my dandy friend, Horatio Paget. The

disappearance of a letter from the packet intrusted to me by Miss

Judson is another mysterious circumstance; nor can I do away with the

impression that I heard the name Meynell distinctly pronounced by

Philip Sheldon the last time I was at the villa.

George Sheldon tells me the secret cannot by any possibility have been

betrayed, unless by me; and I have been prudence itself.

Supposing my suspicions of Mr. Goodge to be correct, the letters

extracted from Mrs. Rebecca's correspondence might tell much, and might

even put Horatio on the track of the Meynells. But how should he get

his first inkling of the business?

Certainly not from me or from George Sheldon. But might not his

attention have been attracted by that advertisement for heirs-at-law to

the Haygarthian estate which appeared in the _Times_?

These are questions with which the legal intellect of my Sheldon may

best grapple. For myself, I can only drift with the resistless stream

called life.

I was so unfortunate as to make my appearance in our common

sitting-room five minutes after my patron. There had been time enough

for him to examine the superscription and postmark of my letter. He was

whistling when I went into the room. People who have been looking at

things that don't belong to them always whistle.

I did not care to read Charlotte's first letter with those hawk's eyes

fixed upon me. So I just glanced at the dear handwriting, as if running

over an ordinary letter with the eye of indifference, and then put the

document into my pocket with the best assumption of carelessness I was

capable of. How I longed for the end of that tedious meal, over which

Captain Paget lingered in his usual epicurean fashion!

My friend Horatio has shown himself not a little curious about my late

absence from the joint domicile. I again resorted to the Dorking

fiction,--my aged aunt breaking fast, and requiring much propitiation

from a dutiful nephew with an eye to her testamentary arrangements. I

had been compelled to endow my shadowy relative with a comfortable

little bit of money, in order to account for my devotion; since the

powerful mind of my Horatio would have refused to grasp the idea of

disinterested affection for an ancient kinswoman.

There was an ominous twinkle in the Captain's sharp gray eyes when I

gave this account of my absence, and I sorely doubt his acceptance of

this second volume of the Dorking romance. Ah, what a life it is we

lead in the tents of Ishmael, the cast-away! through what tortuous

pathways wander the nomad tribes who call Hagar, the abandoned, their

mother! what lies, what evasions, what prevarications! Horatio Paget

and I watch each other like two cunning fencers, with a stereotyped

smile upon our lips and an eager restlessness in our eyes, and who

shall say that one or other of our rapiers is not poisoned, as in the

famous duel before Claudius, usurper of Denmark? My dear one's letter

is all sweetness and love. She is coming home; and much as she prefers

Yorkshire to Bayswater, she is pleased to return for my sake--for my

sake. She leaves the pure atmosphere of that simple country home to

become the central point in a network of intrigue; and I am bound to

keep the secret so closely interwoven with her fate. I love her more

truly, more purely than I thought myself capable of loving; yet I can

only approach her as the tool of George Sheldon, a rapacious

conspirator, bent on securing the hoarded thousands of old John

Haygarth.

Of all men upon this earth I should be the last to underrate the

advantages of wealth,--I who have been reared in the gutter, which is

Poverty's cradle. Yet I would fain Charlotte's fortune had come to her

in any other fashion than as the result of my work in the character of

a salaried private inquirer.

BOOK THE SEVENTH.

CHARLOTTE'S ENGAGEMENT.

CHAPTER I.

"IN YOUR PATIENCE YE ARE STRONG."

Miss Halliday returned to the gothic villa at Bayswater with a bloom on

her cheeks, and a brightness in her eyes, which surpassed her wonted

bloom and brightness, fair and bright as her beauty had been from the

hour in which she was created to charm mankind. She had been a creature

to adore even in the first dawn of infancy, and in her christening-hood

and toga of white satin had been a being to dream of. But now she

seemed invested all at once with a new loveliness--more spiritual, more

pensive, than the old.

Might not Valentine have cried, with the rapturous pride of a lover:

"Look at the woman here with the new soul!" and anon: "This new soul is

mine!"

It was love that had imparted a new charm to Miss Halliday's beauty.

Diana wondered at the subtle change as her friend sat in her favourite

window on the morning after her return, looking dreamily out into the

blossomless garden, where evergreens of the darkest and spikiest

character stood up stern and straight against the cold gray sky. Diana

had welcomed her friend in her usual reserved manner, much to

Charlotte's discomfiture. The girl so yearned for a confidante. She had

no idea of hiding her happiness from this chosen friend, and waited

eagerly for the moment in which she could put her arms round Diana's

neck and tell her what it was that had made Newhall so sweet to her

during this particular visit.

She sat in the window this morning thinking of Valentine, and

languishing to speak of him, but at a loss how to begin. There are some

people about whose necks the arms of affection can scarce entwine

themselves. Diana Paget sat at her eternal embroidery-frame, picking up

beads on her needle with the precision of some self-feeding machine.

The little glass beads made a hard clicking sound as they dropped from

her needle,--a very frosty, unpromising sound, as it seemed to

Charlotte's hyper-sensitive ear.

There had been an unwonted reserve between the girls since Charlotte's

return,--a reserve which arose, on Miss Halliday's part, from the

contest between girlish shyness and the eager desire for a confidante;

and on the part of Miss Paget, from that gloomy discontent which had of

late possessed her.

She watched Charlotte furtively as she picked up her beads--watched her

wonderingly, unable to comprehend the happiness that gave such

spiritual brightness to her eyes. It was no longer the childlike gaiety

of heart which had made Miss Halliday's girlhood so pleasant. It was

the thoughtful, serene delight of womanhood.

"She can care very little for Valentine," Diana thought, "or she could

scarcely seem so happy after such a long separation. I doubt if these

bewitching women who enchant all the world know what it is to feel

deeply. Happiness is a habit with this girl. Valentine's attentions

were very pleasant to her. The pretty little romance was very agreeable

while it lasted; but at the first interruption of the story she shuts

the book, and thinks of it no more. O, if my Creator had made _me_ like

that! If I could forget the days we spent together, and the dream I

dreamt!"

That never-to-be-forgotten vision came back to Diana Paget as she sat

at her work; and for a few minutes the clicking sound of the beads

ceased, while she waited with clasped hands until the shadows should

have passed before her eyes. The old dream came back to her like a

picture, bright with colour and light. But the airy habitation which

she had built for herself of old was no "palace lifting to Italian

heavens its marble roof." It was only a commonplace lodging in a street

running out of the Strand, with just a peep of the river from a trim

little balcony. An airy second-floor sitting-room, with engraved

portraits of the great writers on the newly-papered walls: on one side

an office-desk, on the other a work-table. The unpretending shelter of

a newspaper hack, who lives _à jour la journée_, and whose wife must

achieve wonders in the way of domestic economy in order to eke out his

modest earnings.

This was Diana Paget's vision of Paradise, and it seemed only the

brighter now that she felt it was never to be anything more than a

supernal picture painted on her brain.

After sitting silent for some little time, eager to talk, but waiting

to be interrogated, Charlotte was fain to break silence.

"You don't ask me whether I enjoyed myself in Yorkshire, Di," she said,

looking shyly down at the little bunch of charms and lockets which

employed her restless fingers.

"Didn't I, really?" replied Diana, languidly; "I thought that was one

of the stereotyped inquiries one always made."

"I hope you wouldn't make stereotyped inquiries of _me_, Diana."

"No, I ought not to do so. But I think there are times when one is

artificial even with one's best friends. And you are my best friend,

Charlotte. I may as well say my only friend," the girl added, with a

laugh.

"Diana," cried Charlotte, reproachfully, "why do you speak so bitterly?

You know how dearly I love you. I do, indeed, dear. There is scarcely

anything in this world I would not do for you. But I am not your only

friend. There is Mr. Hawkehurst, whom you have known so long."

Miss Halliday's face was in a flame; and although she bent very low to

examine the golden absurdities hanging on her watch-chain, she could

not conceal her blushes from the eyes that were so sharpened by

jealousy.

"Mr. Hawkehurst!" cried Diana, with unspeakable contempt. "If I were

drowning, do you think _he_ would stretch out his hand to save me while

you were within his sight? When he comes to this house--he who has seen

so much poverty, and misery, and shame, and--happiness with me and

mine--do you think he so much as remembers my existence? Do you think

he ever stops to consider whether I am that Diana Paget who was once

his friend and confidante and fellow-wayfarer and companion? or only a

lay figure dressed up to fill a vacant chair in your drawing-room?"

"Diana!"

"It is all very well to look at me reproachfully, Charlotte. You must

know that I am speaking the truth. You talk of friendship. What is that

word worth if it does not mean care and thought for another? Do you

imagine that Valentine Hawkehurst ever thinks of me, or considers me?"

Charlotte was fain to keep silence. She remembered how very rarely, in

those long afternoons at Newhall farm, the name of Diana Paget had been

mentioned. She remembered how, when she and Valentine were mapping out

the future so pleasantly, she had stopped in the midst of an eloquent

bit of word-painting, descriptive of the little suburban cottage they

were to live in, to dispose of Diana's fate in a sentence,--

"And dear Di can stop at the villa to take care of mamma," she had

said; whereupon Mr. Hawkehurst had assented, with a careless nod, and

the description of the ideal cottage had been continued.

Charlotte remembered this now with extreme contrition. She had been so

supremely happy, and so selfish in her happiness.

"O, Di," she cried, "how selfish happy people are!" And then she

stopped in confusion, perceiving that the remark had little relevance

to Diana's last observation.

"Valentine shall be your friend, dear," she said, after a pause.

"O, you are beginning to answer for him already!" exclaimed Miss Paget,

with increasing bitterness.

"Diana, why are you so unkind to me?" Charlotte cried, passionately.

"Don't you see that I am longing to confide in you? What is it that

makes you so bitter? You must know how truly I love you. And if Mr.

Hawkehurst is not what he once was to you, you must remember how cold

and distant you always are in your manner to him. I am sure, to hear

you speak to him, and to see you look at him sometimes, one would think

he was positively hateful to you. And I want you to like him a little

for my sake."

Miss Halliday left her seat by the window as she said this, and went

towards the table by which her friend was sitting. She crept close to

Diana, and with a half-frightened, half-caressing movement, seated

herself on the low ottoman at her feet, and, seated thus, possessed

herself of Miss Paget's cold hand.

"I want you to like Mr. Hawkehurst a little, Di," she repeated, "for my

sake."

"Very well, I will try to like him a little--for your sake," answered

Miss Paget, in a very unsympathetic tone.

"O, Di! tell me how it was he offended you."

"Who told you that he offended me?"

"Your own manner, dear. You could never have been so cold and distant

with him--having known him so long, and endured so many troubles in his

company--if you had not been deeply offended by him."

"That is your idea, Charlotte; but, you see, I am very unlike you. I am

fitful and capricious. I used to like Mr. Hawkehurst, and now I dislike

him. As to offence, his whole life has offended me, just as my father's

life has offended me, from first to last. I am not good and amiable and

loving, like you; but I hate deceptions and lies; above all, the lies

that some men traffic in day after day."

"Was Valentine's--was your father's life a very bad one?" Charlotte

asked, trembling palpably, and looking up at Miss Paget's face with

anxious eyes.

"Yes, it was a mean false life,--a life of trick and artifice. I do not

know the details of the schemes by which my father and Valentine earned

their daily bread--and my daily bread; but I know they inflicted loss

upon other people. Whether the wrong done was always done deliberately

and consciously upon Valentine's part, I cannot say. He may have been

only a tool of my father's. I hope he was, for the most part an

unconscious tool."

She said all this in a dreamy way, as if uttering her own thoughts,

rather than seeking to enlighten Charlotte.

"I am sure he was an unconscious tool," cried that young lady, with an

air of conviction; "it is not in his nature to do anything false or

dishonourable."

"Indeed! you know him very well, it seems," said Diana.

Ah, what a tempest was raging in that proud passionate heart! what a

strife between the powers of good and evil! Pitying love for Charlotte;

tender compassion for her rival's childlike helplessness; and

unutterable sense of her own loss.

She had loved him so dearly, and he was taken from her. There had been

a time when he almost loved her--almost! Yes, it was the remembrance of

that which made the trial so bitter. The cup had approached her lips,

only to be dashed away for ever.

"What did I ask in life except his love?" she said to herself. "Of all

the pleasures and triumphs which girls of my age enjoy, is there one

that I ever envied? No, I only sighed for his love. To live in a

lodging-house parlour with him, to sit by and watch him at his work, to

drudge for him, to bear with him--this was my brightest dream of

earthly bliss; and she has broken it!"

It was thus Diana argued with herself, as she sat looking down at the

bright creature who had done her this worst, last wrong which one woman

can do to another. This passionate heart, which ached with such cruel

pain, was prone to evil, and to-day the scorpion Jealousy was digging

his sharp tooth into its very core. It was not possible for Diana Paget

to feel kindly disposed towards the girl whose unconscious hand had

shattered the airy castle of her dreams. Was it not a hard thing that

the bright creature, whom every one was ready to adore, must needs

steal away this one heart?

"It has always been like this," thought Diana. "The story of David and

Nathan is a parable that is perpetually being illustrated. David is so

rich--he is lord of incalculable flocks and herds; but he will not be

content till he has stolen the one little ewe lamb, the poor man's pet

and darling."

"Diana," said Miss Halliday very softly, "you are so difficult to talk

to this morning, and I have so much to say to you."

"About your visit, or about Mr. Hawkehurst?"

"About--Yorkshire," answered Charlotte, with the air of a shy child who

has made her appearance at dessert, and is asked whether she will have

a pear or a peach.

"About Yorkshire!" repeated Miss Paget, with a little sigh of relief.

"I shall be very glad to hear about your Yorkshire friends. Was the

visit a pleasant one?"

"Very, very pleasant!" answered Charlotte, dwelling tenderly on the

words.

"How sentimental you have grown, Lotta! I think you must have found a

forgotten shelf of Minerva Press novels in some cupboard at your

aunt's. You have lost all your vivacity."

"Have I?" murmured Charlotte; "and yet I am happier than I was when I

went away. Whom do you think I met at Newhall, Di?"

"I have not the slightest idea. My notions of Yorkshire are very vague.

I fancy the people amiable savages; just a little in advance of the

ancient Britons whom Julius Caesar came over to conquer. Whom did you

meet there? Some country squire, I suppose, who fell in love with your

bright eyes, and wished you to waste the rest of your existence in

those northern wilds."

Miss Paget was not a woman to bare her wounds for the scrutiny of the

friendliest eyes. Let the tooth of the serpent bite never so keenly,

she could meet her sorrows with a bold front. Was she not accustomed to

suffer--she, the scapegoat of defrauded nurses and indignant

landladies, the dependent and drudge of her kinswoman's gynæceum, the

despised of her father? The flavour of these waters was very familiar

to her lips. The draught was only a little more acrid, a little deeper,

and habit had enabled her to drain the cup without complaining, if not

in a spirit of resignation. To-day she had been betrayed into a brief

outbreak of passion; but the storm had passed, and a more observant

person than Charlotte might have been deceived by her manner.

"Now you are my own Di again," cried Miss Halliday; somewhat cynical at

the best of times, but always candid and true.

Miss Paget winced ever so little as her friend said this.

"No, dear," continued Charlotte, with the faintest spice of coquetry;

"it was not a Yorkshire squire. It was a person you know very well; a

person we have been talking of this morning. O, Di, you must surely

have understood me when I said I wanted you to like him for my sake!"

"Valentine Hawkehurst!" exclaimed Diana.

"Who else, you dear obtuse Di!"

"He was in Yorkshire?"

"Yes, dear. It was the most wonderful thing that ever happened. He

marched up to Newhall gate one morning in the course of his rambles,

without having the least idea that I was to be found in the

neighbourhood. Wasn't it wonderful?"

"What could have taken him to Yorkshire?"

"He came on business."

"But what business?"

"How do I know? Some business of papa's, or of George Sheldon's,

perhaps. And yet that can't be. He is writing a book, I think, about

geology or archaeology--yes, that's it, archaeology."

"Valentine Hawkehurst writing a book on archaeology!" cried Miss Paget.

"You must be dreaming, Charlotte."

"Why so? He does write, does he not?"

"He has been reporter for a newspaper. But he is the last person to

write about archaeology. I think there must be some mistake."

"Well, dear, it may be so. I didn't pay much attention to what he said

about business. It seemed so strange for him to be there, just as much

at home as if he had been one of the family. O, Di, you can't imagine

how kind aunt Dorothy and uncle Joe were to him! They like him so

much--and they know we are engaged."

Miss Halliday said these last words almost in a whisper.

"What!" exclaimed Diana, "do you mean to say that you have promised to

marry this man, of whom you know nothing but what is unfavourable?"

"What do I know in his disfavour? Ah, Diana, how unkind you are! and

what a dislike you must have for poor Valentine! Of course, I know he

is not what people call a good match. A good match means that one is to

have a pair of horses, whose health is so uncertain that I am sure

their lives must be a burden to them, if we may judge by our horses;

and a great many servants, who are always conducting themselves in the

most awful manner, if poor mamma's experience is any criterion; and a

big expensive house, which nobody can be prevailed on to dust. No, Di!

that is just the kind of life I hate. What I should like is a dear

little cottage at Highgate or Wimbledon, and a tiny, tiny garden, in

which Valentine and I could walk every morning before he began his

day's work, and where we could drink tea together on summer evenings--a

garden just large enough to grow a few rose-bushes. O. Di! do you think

I want to marry a rich man?"

"No, Charlotte; but I should think you would like to marry a good man."

"Valentine is good. No one but a good man could have been so happy as

he seemed at Newhall farm. That simple country life could not have been

happiness for a bad man."

"And was Valentine Hawkehurst really happy at Newhall?"

"Really--really--really! Don't try to shake my faith in him, Diana; it

is not to be shaken. He has told me a little about the past, though I

can see that it pains him very much to speak of it. He has told me of

his friendless youth, spent amongst unprincipled people, and what a

mere waif and stray he was until he met me. And I am to be his

pole-star, dear, to guide him in the right path. Do you know, Di, I

cannot picture to myself anything sweeter than that--to be a good

influence for the person one loves. Valentine says his whole nature has

undergone a change since he has known me. What am I that I should work

so good a change in my dear one? It is very foolish, is it not, Di?"

"Yes, Charlotte," replied the voice of reason from the lips of Miss

Paget; "it is all foolishness from beginning to end, and I can foresee

nothing but trouble as the result of such folly. What will your mamma

say to such an engagement? or what will Mr. Sheldon say?"

"Yes, that is the question," returned Charlotte, very seriously. "Dear

mamma is one of the kindest creatures in the world, and I'm sure she

would consent to anything rather than see me unhappy. And then, you

know, she likes Valentine very much, because he has given her orders

for the theatres, and all that kind of thing. But, whatever mamma

thinks, she will be governed by what Mr. Sheldon thinks; and of course

he will be against our marriage."

"Our marriage!" It was a settled matter, then--a thing that was to be

sooner or later; and there remained only the question as to how and

when it was to be. Diana sat like a statue, enduring her pain. So may

have suffered the Christian martyrs in their death-agony; so suffers a

woman when the one dear hope of her life is reft from her, and she dare

not cry aloud.

"Mr. Sheldon is the last man in the world to permit such a marriage,"

she said presently.

"Perhaps," replied Charlotte; "but I am not going to sacrifice

Valentine for Mr. Sheldon's pleasure. Mr. Sheldon has full power over

mamma and her fortune, but he has no real authority where I am

concerned. I am as free as air, Diana, and I have not a penny in the

world. Is not that delightful?"

The girl asked this question in all good faith, looking up at her

friend with a radiant countenance. What irony there was in the question

for Diana Paget, whose whole existence had been poisoned by the lack of

that sterling coin of the realm which seemed such sordid dross in the

eyes of Charlotte!

"What do you mean, Charlotte?"

"I mean, that even his worst enemies cannot accuse Valentine of any

mercenary feeling. He does not ask me to marry him for the sake of my

fortune."

"Does he know your real position?"

"Most fully. And now, Diana, tell me that you will try to like him, for

my sake, and that you will be kind, and will speak a good word for me

to mamma by-and-by, when I have told her all."

"When do you mean to tell her?"

"Directly--or almost directly. I scarcely know how to set about it. I

am sure it has been hard enough to tell you."

"My poor Charlotte! What an ungrateful wretch I must be!"

"My dear Diana, you have no reason to be grateful. I love you very

dearly, and I could not live in this house without you. It is I who

have reason to be grateful, when I remember how you bear with mamma's

fidgety ways, and with Mr. Sheldon's gloomy temper, and all for love of

me."

"Yes, Lotta, for love of you," Miss Paget answered, with a sigh; "and I

will do more than that for love of you."

She had her arm round her happy rival's beautiful head, and she was

looking down at the sweet upturned face with supreme tenderness. She

felt no anger against this fair enslaver, who had robbed her of her

little lamb. She only felt some touch of anger against the Providence

which had decreed that the lamb should be so taken.

No suspicion of her friend's secret entered Charlotte Halliday's mind.

In all their intercourse Diana had spoken very little of Valentine; and

in the little she had said there had been always the same half-bitter,

half-disdainful tone. Charlotte, in her simple candour, accepted this

tone as the evidence of Miss Paget's aversion to her father's _protégé_.

"Poor Di does not like to see her father give so much of his friendship

to a stranger while she is neglected," thought Miss Halliday; and

having once jumped at this conclusion, she made no further effort to

penetrate the mysteries of Diana's mind.

She was less than ever inclined to speculation about Diana's feelings

now that she was in love, and blest with the sweet consciousness that

her love was returned. Tender and affectionate as she was, she could

not quite escape that taint of egotism which is the ruling vice of

fortunate lovers. Her mind was not wide enough to hold much more than

one image, which demanded so large a space.

CHAPTER II.

MRS. SHELDON ACCEPTS HER DESTINY.

Miss Halliday had an interview with her mother that evening in Mrs.

Sheldon's dressing-room, while that lady was preparing for rest, with

considerable elaboration of detail in the way of hair-brushing, and

putting away of neck-ribbons and collars and trinkets in smart little

boxes and handy little drawers, all more or less odorous from the

presence of dainty satin-covered sachets. The sachets, and the drawers,

and boxes, and trinkets were Mrs. Sheldon's best anchorage in this

world. Such things as these were the things that made life worth

endurance for this poor weak little woman; and they were more real to

her than her daughter, because more easy to realise. The beautiful

light-hearted girl was a being whose existence had been always

something of a problem for Georgina Sheldon. She loved her after her

own feeble fashion, and would have jealously asserted her superiority

over every other daughter in the universe; but the power to understand

her or to sympathise with her had not been given to that narrow mind.

The only way in which Mrs. Sheldon's affection showed itself was

unquestioning indulgence and the bestowal of frivolous gifts, chosen

with no special regard to Charlotte's requirements, but rather because

they happened to catch Mrs. Sheldon's eye as they glittered or sparkled

in the windows of Bayswater repositories.

Mr. Sheldon happened to be dining out on this particular evening. He

was a guest at a great City feast, to which some of the richest men

upon 'Change had been bidden; so Miss Halliday had an excellent

opportunity for making her confession.

Poor Georgy was not a little startled by the avowal.

"My darling Lotta!" she screamed, "do you think your papa would ever

consent to such a thing?"

"I think my dear father would have consented to anything likely to

secure my happiness, mamma," the girl answered sadly.

She was thinking how different this crisis in her life would have

seemed if the father she had loved so dearly had been spared to counsel

her.

"I was not thinking of my poor dear first husband," said Georgy. This

numbering of her husbands was always unpleasant to Charlotte. It seemed

such a very business-like mode of description to be applied to the

father she so deeply regretted.

"I was thinking of your step-papa," continued Mrs. Sheldon. "He would

never consent to your marrying Mr. Hawkehurst, who really seems to have

nothing to recommend him except his good looks and an obliging

disposition with regard to orders for the theatres."

"I am not bound to consult my stepfather's wishes. I only want to

please you, mamma."

"But, my dear, I cannot possibly consent to anything that Mr. Sheldon

disapproves."

"O, mamma, dear kind mamma, do have an opinion of your own for once in

a way! I daresay Mr. Sheldon is the best possible judge of everything

connected with the Stock Exchange and the money-market; but don't let

him choose a husband for me. Let me have your approval, mamma, and I

care for no one else. I don't want to marry against your will. But I am

sure you like Mr. Hawkehurst."

Mrs. Sheldon shook her head despondingly.

"It's all very well to like an agreeable young man as an occasional

visitor," she said, "especially when most of one's visitors are

middle-aged City people. But it is a very different thing when one's

only daughter talks of marrying him. I can't imagine what can have put

such an idea as marriage into your head. It is only a few months since

you came home from school; and I fancied that you would have stopped

with me for years before you thought of settling."

Miss Halliday made a wry face.

"Dear mamma," she said, "I don't want to 'settle.' That is what one's

housemaid says, isn't it, when she talks of leaving service and

marrying some young man from the baker's or the grocer's? Valentine and

I are not in a hurry to be married. I am sure, for my own part, I don't

care how long our engagement lasts. I only wish to be quite candid and

truthful with you, mamma; and I thought it a kind of duty to tell you

that he loves me, and that--I love him--very dearly."

These last words were spoken with extreme shyness.

Mrs. Sheldon laid down her hair-brushes while she contemplated her

daughter's blushing face. Those blushes had become quite a chronic

affection with Miss Halliday of late.

"But, good gracious me, Charlotte," she exclaimed, growing peevish in

her sense of helplessness, "who is to tell Mr. Sheldon?"

"There is no necessity for Mr. Sheldon to be enlightened yet awhile,

mamma. It is to you I owe duty and obedience--not to him. Pray keep my

secret, kindest and most indulgent of mothers, and--and ask Valentine

to come and see you now and then."

"Ask him to come and see me, Charlotte! You must know very well that I

never invite any one to dinner except at Mr. Sheldon's wish. I am sure

I quite tremble at the idea of a dinner. There is such trouble about

the waiting, and such dreadful uncertainty about the cooking. And if

one has it all done by Birch's people, one's cook gives warning next

morning," added poor Georgy, with a dismal recollection of recent

perplexities. "I am sure I often wish myself young again, in the dairy

at Hyley farm, making matrimony cakes for a tea-party, with a ring and

a fourpenny-piece hidden in the middle. I'm sure the Hyley tea-parties

were pleasanter than Mr. Sheldon's dinners, with those solemn City

people, who can't exist without clear turtle and red mullet."

"Ah, mother dear, our lives were altogether happier in those days. I

delight in the Yorkshire tea-parties, and the matrimony cakes, and all

the talk and laughter about the fourpenny-piece and the ring. I

remember getting the fourpenny-piece at Newhall last year. And that

means that one is to die an old maid, you know. And now I am engaged.

As to the dinners, mamma, Mr. Sheldon may keep them all for himself and

his City friends. Valentine is the last person in the world to care for

clear turtle. If you will let him drop in sometimes of an

afternoon--say once a week or so--when you, and I, and Diana are

sitting at our work in the drawing-room, and if you will let him hand

us our cups at our five-o'clock tea, he will be the happiest of men. He

adores tea. You'll let him come, won't you, dear? O, mamma, I feel just

like a servant who asks to be allowed to see her 'young man.' Will you

let my 'young man' come to tea once in a way?"

"Well, Charlotte, I'm sure I don't know," said Mrs. Sheldon, with

increasing helplessness. "It's really a very dreadful position for me

to be placed in."

"Quite appalling, is it not, mamma? But then I suppose it is a position

that people afflicted with daughters must come to sooner or later."

"If it were the mere civility of asking him to tea," pursued poor

Georgy, heedless of this flippant interruption, "I'm sure I should be

the last to make any objection. Indeed, I am under a kind of obligation

to Mr. Hawkehurst, for his polite attention has enabled us to go to the

theatres very often when your papa would not have thought of buying

tickets. But then, you see, Lotta, the question in point is not his

coming to our five-o'clock tea--which seems really a perfect mockery to

any one brought up in Yorkshire--but whether you are to be engaged to

him."

"Dear mamma, _that_ is not a question at all, for I am already engaged

to him."

"But, Charlotte--"

"I do not think I could bring myself to disobey you, dear mother,"

continued the girl tenderly; "and if you tell me, of your own free

will, and acting on your conviction, that I am not to marry him, I must

bow my head to your decision, however hard it may seem. But one thing

is quite certain, mamma: I have given my promise to Valentine; and if I

do not marry him, I shall never marry at all; and then the dreadful

augury of the fourpenny-piece will be verified."

Miss Halliday pronounced this determination with a decision of manner

that quite overawed her mother. It had been the habit of Georgy's mind

to make a feeble protest against all the mutations of life, but in the

end to submit very quietly to the inevitable; and since Valentine

Hawkehurst's acceptance as Charlotte's future husband seemed

inevitable, she was fain to submit in this instance also.

Valentine was allowed to call at the Lawn, and was received with a

feeble, half-plaintive graciousness by the lady of the house. He was

invited to stop for the five-o'clock tea, and availed himself

rapturously of this delightful privilege. His instinct told him what

gentle hand had made the meal so dainty and home-like, and for whose

pleasure the phantasmal pieces of bread-and-butter usually supplied by

the trim parlour-maid had given place to a salver loaded with innocent

delicacies in the way of pound-cake and apricot jam.

Mr. Hawkehurst did his uttermost to deserve so much indulgence. He

scoured London in search of free admissions for the theatres, hunting

"Ragamuffins" and members of the Cibber Club, and other privileged

creatures, at all their places of resort. He watched for the advent of

novels adapted to Georgy's capacity--lively records of croquet and

dressing and love-making, from smart young Amazons in the literary

ranks, or deeply interesting romances of the sensation school, with at

least nine deaths in the three volumes, and a comic housemaid, or a

contumacious "Buttons," to relieve the gloom by their playful

waggeries. He read Tennyson or Owen Meredith, or carefully selected

"bits" from the works of a younger and wilder bard, while the ladies

worked industriously at their prie-dieu chairs, or Berlin brioches, or

Shetland couvrepieds, as the case might be. The patroness of a fancy

fair would scarcely have smiled approvingly on the novel effects in

_crochet à tricoter_ produced by Miss Halliday during these pleasant

lectures.

"The rows will come wrong," she said piteously, "and Tennyson's poetry

is so very absorbing!"

Mr. Hawkehurst showed himself to be possessed of honourable, not to say

delicate, feelings in his new position. The gothic villa was his

paradise, and the gates had been freely opened to admit him whensoever

he chose to come. Georgy was just the sort of person from whom people

take ells after having asked for inches; and once having admitted Mr.

Hawkehurst as a privileged guest, she would have found it very

difficult to place any restriction upon the number of his visits.

Happily for this much-perplexed matron, Charlotte and her lover were

strictly honourable. Mr. Hawkehurst never made his appearance at the

villa more than once in the same week, though the "once a week or so"

asked for by Charlotte might have been stretched to a wider

significance.

When Valentine obtained orders for the theatre, he sent them by post,

scrupulously refraining from making them the excuse for a visit.

"That was all very well when I was a freebooter," he said to himself,

"only admitted on sufferance, and liable to have the door shut in my

face any morning. But I am trusted now, and I must prove myself worthy

of my future mother-in-law's confidence. Once a week! One seventh day

of unspeakable happiness--bliss without alloy! The six other days are

very long and dreary. But then they are only the lustreless setting in

which that jewel the seventh shines so gloriously. Now, if I were

Waller, what verses I would sing about my love! Alas, I am only a

commonplace young man, and can find no new words in which to tell the

old sweet story!"

If the orders for stalls and private boxes were not allowed to serve as

an excuse for visits, they at least necessitated the writing of

letters; and no human being, except a lover, would have been able to

understand why such long letters must needs be written about such a

very small business. The letters secured replies; and when the order

sent was for a box, Mr. Hawkehurst was generally invited to occupy a

seat in it. Ah, what did it matter on those happy nights how hackneyed

the plot of the play, how bald the dialogue, how indifferent the

acting! It was all alike delightful to those two spectators; for a

light that shone neither on earth nor sky brightened everything they

looked on when they sat side by side.

And during all these pleasant afternoons at the villa, or evenings at

the theatre, Diana Paget had to sit by and witness the happiness which

she had dreamed might some day be hers. It was a part of her duty to be

present on these occasions, and she performed that duty punctiliously.

She might have made excuses for absenting herself, but she was too

proud to make any such excuses.

"Am I such a coward as to tell a lie in order to avoid a little pain

more or less? If I say I have a headache, and stay in my own room while

he is here, will the afternoon seem any more pleasant or any shorter to

me? The utmost difference would be the difference between a dull pain

and a sharp pain; and I think the sharper agony is easier to bear."

Having argued with herself thus, Miss Paget endured her weekly

martyrdom with Spartan fortitude.

"What have I lost?" she said to herself, as she stole a furtive glance

now and then at the familiar face of her old companion. "What is this

treasure, the loss of which makes me seem to myself such an abject

wretch? Only the love of a man who at his best is not worthy of this

girl's pure affection, and at his worst must have been unworthy even of

mine. But then at his worst he is dearer to me than the best man who

ever lived upon this earth."

CHAPTER III.

MR. HAWKEHURST AND MR. GEORGE SHELDON COME TO AN UNDERSTANDING.

There was no such thing as idleness for Valentine Hawkehurst during

these happy days of his courtship. The world was his oyster, and that

oyster was yet unopened. For some years he had been hacking and hewing

the shell thereof with the sword of the freebooter, to very little

advantageous effect. He now set himself seriously to work with the

pickaxe of the steady-going labourer. He was a secessionist from the

great army of adventurers. He wanted to enrol himself in the ranks of

the respectable, the plodders, the ratepayers, the simple citizens who

love their wives and children, and go to their parish church on

Sundays. He had an incentive to steady industry, which had hitherto

been wanting in his life. He was beloved, and any shame that came to

him would be a still more bitter humiliation for the woman who loved

him.

He felt that the very first step in the difficult path of

respectability would be a step that must separate him from Captain

Paget; but just now separation from that gentleman seemed scarcely

advisable. If there was any mischief in that Ullerton expedition, any

collusion between the Captain and the Reverend Goodge, it would

assuredly be well for Valentine to continue a mode of life which

enabled him to be tolerably well informed as to the movements of the

slippery Horatio. In all the outside positions of life expedience must

ever be the governing principle, and expedience forbade any immediate

break with Captain Paget.

"Whatever you do, keep your eye upon the Captain," said George Sheldon,

in one of many interviews, all bearing upon the Haygarth succession.

"If there is any underhand work going on between him and Philip, you

must be uncommonly slow of perception if you can't ferret it out. I'm

very sorry you met Charlotte Halliday in the north, for of course Phil

must have heard of your appearance in Yorkshire, and that will set him

wondering at any rate, especially as he will no doubt have heard the

Dorking story from Paget. He pretended he saw you leave town the day

you went to Ullerton, but I am half inclined to believe that was only a

trap."

"I don't think Mr. Sheldon has heard of my appearance in Yorkshire yet."

"Indeed! Miss Charlotte doesn't care to make a confidant of her

stepfather, I suppose. Keep her in that mind, Hawkehurst. If you play

your cards well, you ought to be able to get her to marry you on the

quiet."

"I don't think that would be possible. In fact, I am sure

Charlotte would not marry without her mother's consent," answered

Valentine, thoughtfully.

"And of course that means my brother Philip's consent," exclaimed

George Sheldon, with contemptuous impatience. "What a slow, bungling

fellow you are, Hawkehurst! Here is an immense fortune waiting for you,

and a pretty girl in love with you, and you dawdle and deliberate as if

you were going to the dentist's to have a tooth drawn. You've fallen

into a position that any man in London might envy, and you don't seem

to have the smallest capability of appreciating your good luck."

"Well, perhaps I am rather slow to realise the idea of my good

fortune," answered Valentine, still very thoughtfully. "You see, in the

first place, I can't get over a shadowy kind of feeling with regard to

that Haygarthian fortune. It is too far away from my grasp, too large,

too much of the stuff that dreams and novels are made of. And, in the

second place, I love Miss Halliday so fondly and so truly that I don't

like the notion of making my marriage with her any part of the bargain

between you and me."

Mr. Sheldon contemplated his confederate with unmitigated disdain.

"Don't try that sort of thing with me, Hawkehurst," he said; "that

sentimental dodge may answer very well with some men, but I'm about the

last to be taken in by it. You are playing fast-and-loose with me, and

you want to throw me over--as my brother Phil would throw me over, if

he got the chance."

"I am not playing fast-and-loose with you," replied Valentine, too

disdainful of Mr. Sheldon for indignation. "I have worked for you

faithfully, and kept your secret honourably, when I had every

temptation to reveal it. You drove your bargain with me, and I have

performed my share of the bargain to the letter. But if you think I am

going to drive a bargain with you about my marriage with Miss Halliday,

you are very much mistaken. That lady will marry me when she pleases,

but she shall not be entrapped into a clandestine marriage for your

convenience."

"O, that's your ultimatum, is it, Mr. Joseph Surface?" said the

lawyer, biting his nails fiercely, and looking askant at his

ally, with angry eyes. "I wonder you don't wind up by saying that the

man who could trade upon a virtuous woman's affection for the

advancement of his fortune, deserves to--get it hot, as our modern

slang has it. Then I am to understand that you decline to precipitate

matters?"

"I most certainly do."

"And the Haygarth business is to remain in abeyance while Miss Halliday

goes through the tedious formula of a sentimental courtship?"

"I suppose so."

"Humph! that's pleasant for me."

"Why should you make the advancement of Miss Halliday's claims

contingent on her marriage? Why not assert her rights at once?"

"Because I will not trust my brother Philip. The day that you show me

the certificate of your marriage with Charlotte Halliday is the day on

which I shall make my first move in this business. I told you the other

day that I would rather make a bargain with you than with my brother."

"And what kind of bargain do you expect to make with me when Miss

Halliday is my wife?"

"I'll tell you, Valentine Hawkehurst," replied the lawyer, squaring his

elbows upon his desk in his favourite attitude, and looking across the

table at his coadjutor; "I like to be open and above-board when I can,

and I'll be plain with you in this matter. I want a clear half of John

Haygarth's fortune, and I think that I've a very fair claim to that

amount. The money can only be obtained by means of the documents in my

possession, and but for me that money might have remained till doomsday

unclaimed and unthought of by the descendant of Matthew Haygarth. Look

at it which way you will, I think you'll allow that my demand is a just

one."

"I don't say that it is unjust, though it certainly seems a little

extortionate," replied Valentine. "However, if Charlotte were my wife,

and were willing to cede half the fortune, I'm not the man to dispute

the amount of your reward. When the time comes for bargain-driving,

you'll not find me a difficult person to deal with.

"And when may I expect your marriage with Miss Halliday?" asked George

Sheldon, rapping his hard finger-nails upon the table with suppressed

impatience. "Since you elect to conduct matters in the grand style, and

must wait for mamma's consent and papa's consent, and goodness knows

what else in the way of absurdity, I suppose the delay will be for an

indefinite space of time."

"I don't know about that. I'm not likely to put off the hour in which

I shall call that dear girl my own. I asked her to be my wife before I

knew that she had the blood of Matthew Haygarth in her veins, and the

knowledge of her claim to this fortune does not make her one whit the

dearer to me, penniless adventurer as I am. If poetry were at all in

your line, Mr. Sheldon, you might know that a man's love for a good

woman is generally better than himself. He may be a knave and a

scoundrel, and yet his love for that one perfect creature may be almost

as pure and perfect as herself. That's a psychological mystery out of

the way of Gray's Inn, isn't it?"

"If you'll oblige me by talking common sense for about five minutes,

you may devote your powerful intellect to the consideration of

psychological mysteries for a month at a stretch," exclaimed the

aggravated lawyer.

"O, don't you see how I struggle to be hard-headed and practical!"

cried Valentine; "but a man who is over head and ears in love finds it

rather hard to bring all his ideas to the one infallible grindstone.

You ask me when I am to marry Charlotte Halliday. To-morrow, if our

Fates smile upon us. Mrs. Sheldon knows of our engagement, and consents

to it, but in some manner under protest. I am not to take my dear girl

away from her mother for some time to come. The engagement is to be a

long one. In the mean time I am working hard to gain some kind of

position in literature, for I want to be sure of an income before I

marry, without reference to John Haygarth; and I am a privileged guest

at the villa."

"But my brother Phil has been told nothing?"

"As yet nothing. My visits are paid while he is in the City; and as I

often went to the villa before my engagement, he is not likely to

suspect anything when he happens to hear my name mentioned as a

visitor."

"And do you really think he is in the dark--my brother Philip, who can

turn a man's brains inside out in half an hour's conversation? Mark my

words, Valentine Hawkehurst, that man is only playing with you as a cat

plays with a mouse. He used to see you and Charlotte together before

you went to Yorkshire, and he must have seen the state of the case

quite as plainly as I saw it. He has heard of your visits to the villa

since your return, and has kept a close account of them, and made his

own deductions, depend upon it. And some day, while you and pretty Miss

Charlotte are enjoying your fool's paradise, he will pounce upon you

just as puss pounces on poor mousy."

This was rather alarming, and Valentine felt that it was very likely to

be correct.

"Mr. Sheldon may play the part of puss as he pleases," he replied after

a brief pause for deliberation; "this is a case in which he dare not

show his claws. He has no authority to control Miss Halliday's actions."

"Perhaps not, but he would find means for preventing her marriage if it

was to his interest to do so. He is not _your_ brother, you see, Mr.

Hawkehurst; but he is mine, and I know a good deal about him. His

interest may not be concerned in hindering his stepdaughter's marriage

with a penniless scapegrace. He may possibly prefer such a bridegroom

as less likely to make himself obnoxious by putting awkward questions

about poor Tom Halliday's money, every sixpence of which he means to

keep, of course. If his cards are packed for that kind of marriage,

he'll welcome you to his arms as a son-in-law, and give you his

benediction as well as his stepdaughter. So I think if you can contrive

to inform him of your engagement, without letting him know of your

visit to Yorkshire, it might be a stroke of diplomacy. He might be glad

to get rid of the girl, and might hasten on the marriage of his own

volition."

"He might be glad to get rid of the girl." In the ears of Valentine

Hawkehurst this sounded rank blasphemy. Could there be any one upon

this earth, even a Sheldon, incapable of appreciating the privilege of

that divine creature's presence?

CHAPTER IV.

MR. SHELDON IS PROPITIOUS

It was not very long before Valentine Hawkehurst had reason to respect

the wisdom of his legal patron. Within a few days of his interview with

George Sheldon he paid his weekly visit to the villa. Things were going

very well with him, and life altogether seemed brighter than he had

ever hoped to find it. He had set himself steadily to work to win some

kind of position in literature. He devoted his days to diligent study

in the reading-room of the British Museum, his nights to writing for

the magazines. His acquaintance with press-men had stood him in good

stead; and already he had secured the prompt acceptance of his work in

more than one direction. The young _littérateur_ of the present day has

not such a very hard fight for a livelihood, if his pen has only a

certain lightness and dash, a rattling vivacity and airy grace. It is

only the marvellous boys who come to London with epic poems,

Anglo-Saxon tragedies, or metaphysical treatises in their portmanteaus,

who must needs perish in their prime, or stoop to the drudgery of

office or counting-house.

Valentine Hawkehurst had no vague yearnings after the fame of a Milton,

no inner consciousness that he had been born to stamp out the

footprints of Shakespeare on the sands of time, no unhealthy hungering

after the gloomy grandeur of Byron. He had been brought up amongst

people who treated literature as a trade as well as an art;--and what

art is not more or less a trade? He knew the state of the market, and

what kind of goods were likely to go off briskly, and it was for the

market he worked. When gray shirtings were in active demand, he set his

loom for gray shirtings; and when the buyers clamoured for fancy goods,

he made haste to produce that class of fabrics. In this he proved

himself a very low-minded and ignominious creature, no doubt; but was

not one Oliver Goldsmith glad to take any order which good Mr. Newberry

might give him, only writing the "Traveller" and the story of Parson

Primrose _pour se distraire_?

Love lent wings to the young essayist's pen. It is to be feared that in

roving among those shelves in Great Russell-street he showed himself

something of a freebooter, taking his "bien" wherever it was to be

found; but did not Molière frankly acknowledge the same practice? Mr.

Hawkehurst wrote about anything and everything. His brain must needs be

a gigantic storehouse of information, thought the respectful reader. He

skipped from Pericles to Cromwell, from Cleopatra to Mary Stuart, from

Sappho to Madame de Sablé; and he wrote of these departed spirits with

such a charming impertinence, with such a delicious affectation of

intimacy, that one would have thought he had sat by Cleopatra as she

melted her pearls, and stood amongst the audience of Pericles when he

pronounced his funeral oration. "With the De Sablé and the Chevreuse,

Ninon and Marion, Maintenon and La Vallière, Anne of Austria and the

great Mademoiselle of France, he seemed to have lived in daily

companionship, so amply did he expatiate upon the smallest details of

their existences, so tenderly did he dwell on their vanished beauties,

their unforgotten graces."

The work was light and pleasant; and the monthly cheques from the

proprietors of a couple of rival periodicals promised to amount to the

income which the adventurer had sighed for as he trod the Yorkshire

moorland. He had asked Destiny to give him Charlotte Halliday and three

hundred a year, and lo! while yet the wish was new, both these

blessings seemed within his grasp. It could scarcely be a matter for

repining it the Fates should choose to throw in an odd fifty thousand

pounds or so.

But was not all this something too much of happiness for a man whose

feet had trodden in evil ways? Were not the Fates mocking this

travel-stained wayfarer with bright glimpses of a paradise whose gates

he was never to pass?

This was the question which Valentine Hawkehurst was fain to ask

himself sometimes; this doubt was the shadow which sometimes made a

sudden darkness that obscured the sunshine.

Happily for Charlotte's true lover, the shadow did not often come

between him and the light of those dear eyes which were his pole-stars.

The December days were shortening as the year drew to its close, and

afternoon tea seemed more than ever delightful to Charlotte and her

betrothed, now that it could be enjoyed in the mysterious half light; a

glimmer of chill gray day looking coldly in at the unshrouded window

like some ghostly watcher envying these mortals their happiness, and

the red glow of the low fire reflected upon every curve and facet of

the shining steel grate.

To sit by the fire at five o'clock in the afternoon, watching the

changeful light upon Charlotte's face, the rosy glow that seemed to

linger caressingly on broad low brow and sweet ripe lips, the deep

shadows that darkened eyes and hair, was bliss unspeakable for Mr.

Hawkehurst. The lovers talked the prettiest nonsense to each other,

while Mrs. Sheldon dozed placidly behind the friendly shelter of a

banner-screen hooked on to the chimney-piece, or conversed with Diana

in a monotonous undertone, solemnly debating the relative wisdom of

dyeing or turning in relation to a faded silk dress.

Upon one special evening Valentine lingered just a little longer than

usual. Christmas was near at hand, and the young man had brought his

liege lady tribute in the shape of a bundle of Christmas literature.

Tennyson had been laid aside in favour of the genial Christmas fare,

which had the one fault, that it came a fortnight before the jovial

season, and in a manner fore-stalled the delights of that time-honoured

period, making the season itself seem flat and dull, and turkey and

plum-pudding the stalest commodities in the world when they did come.

How, indeed, can a man do full justice to his aunt Tabitha's

plum-pudding, or his uncle Joe's renowned rum-punch, if he has quaffed

the steaming-bowl with the "Seven Poor Travellers," or eaten his

Christmas dinner at the "Kiddleawink" a fortnight beforehand? Are not

the chief pleasures of life joys as perishable as the bloom on a peach

or the freshness of a rose?

Valentine had read the ghastliest of ghost-stories, and the most

humorous of word-pictures, for the benefit of the audience in Mrs.

Sheldon's drawing-room; and now, after tea, they sat by the fire

talking of the ghost-story, and discussing that unanswerable question

about the possibility of such spiritual appearances, which seems to

have been debated ever since the world began.

"Dr. Johnson believed in ghosts," said Valentine.

"O, please spare us Dr. Johnson," cried Charlotte, with seriocomic

intensity. "What is it that obliges magazine-writers to be perpetually

talking about Dr. Johnson? If they must dig up persons from the past,

why can't they dig up newer persons than that poor ill-used doctor?"

The door opened with a hoarse groan, and Mr. Sheldon came into the room

while Miss Halliday was making her playful protest. She stopped,

somewhat confused by that sudden entrance.

There is a statue of the Commandant in every house, at whose coming

hearts grow cold and lips are suddenly silent. It was the first time

that the master of the villa had interrupted one of these friendly

afternoon teas, and Mrs. Sheldon and her daughter felt that a domestic

crisis was at hand.

"How's this?" cried the stockbroker's strong hard voice; "you seem all

in the dark."

He took a wax-match from a little gilt stand on the mantelpiece and

lighted two flaring lamps. He was the sort of man who is always eager

to light the gas when people are sitting in the gloaming, meditative

and poetical. He let the broad glare of common sense in upon their

foolish musings, and scared away Robin Goodfellow and the fairies by

means of the Western Gaslight Company's illuminating medium.

The light of those two flaring jets of gas revealed Charlotte Halliday

looking shyly at the roses on the carpet, and trifling nervously with

one of the show-books on the table. The same light revealed Valentine

Hawkehurst standing by the young lady's chair, and looking at Mr.

Sheldon with a boldness of countenance that was almost defiance. Poor

Georgy's face peered out from behind her favourite banner-screen,

looking from one to the other in evident alarm. Diana sat in her

accustomed corner, watchful, expectant, awaiting the domestic storm.

To the surprise of every one except Mr. Sheldon, there was no storm,

not even the lightest breeze that ever blew in domestic hemispheres.

The stockbroker saluted his stepdaughter with a friendly nod, and

greeted her lover with a significant grin.

"How d'ye do, Hawkehurst?" he said, in his pleasantest manner. "It's an

age since I've seen you. You're going in for literature, I hear; and a

very good thing too, if you can make it pay. I understand there are

some fellows who really do make that sort of thing pay. Seen my brother

George lately? Yes, I suppose you and George are quite a Damon and

What's-his-name. You're going to dine here to-night, of course? I

suppose we may go in to dinner at once, eh, Georgy?--it's half-past

six."

Mr. Hawkehurst made some faint pretence of having a particular

engagement elsewhere; for, supposing Sheldon to be unconscious, he

scorned to profit by that gentleman's ignorance. And then, having

faltered his refusal, he looked at Charlotte, and Charlotte's eyes

cried "Stay," as plainly as such lovely eyes can speak. So the end of

it was, that he stayed and partook of the Sheldonian crimped skate, and

the Sheldonian roast-beef and tapioca-pudding, and tasted some especial

Moselle, which, out of the kindliness of his nature, Mr. Sheldon opened

for his stepdaughter's betrothed.

After dinner there were oranges and crisp uncompromising biscuits, that

made an explosive noise like the breaking of windows whenever any one

ventured to tamper with them; item, a decanter of sherry in a silver

stand; item, a decanter of port, which Mr. Sheldon declared to be

something almost too good to be drunk, and to the merits of which

Valentine was supremely indifferent. The young man would fain have

followed his delight when she accompanied her mamma and Diana to the

drawing-room; but Mr. Sheldon detained him.

"I want a few words with you, Hawkehurst," he said; and Charlotte's

cheeks flamed red as peonies at sound of this alarming sentence. "You

shall go after the ladies presently, and they shall torture that poor

little piano to their hearts' delight for your edification. I won't

detain you many minutes. You had really better try that port."

Valentine closed the door upon the departing ladies, and went back to

his seat very submissively. If there were any battle to be fought out

between him and Philip Sheldon, the sooner the trumpet sounded to arms

the better.

"His remarkable civility almost inclines me to think that he does

really want to get rid of that dear girl," Valentine said to himself,

as he filled his glass and gravely awaited Mr. Sheldon's pleasure.

"Now then, my dear Hawkehurst," began that gentleman, squaring himself

in his comfortable arm-chair, and extending his legs before the cheery

fire, "let us have a little friendly chat. I am not given to beating

about the bush, you know, and whatever I have to say I shall say in

very plain words. In the first place, I hope you have not so poor an

opinion of my perceptive faculties as to suppose that I don't see what

is going on between you and Miss Lotta yonder."

"My dear Mr. Sheldon, I--"

"Hear what I have to say first, and make your protestations afterwards.

You needn't be alarmed; you won't find me quite as bad as the

stepmother one reads about in the story-books, who puts her

stepdaughter into a pie, and all that kind of thing. I suppose

stepfathers have been a very estimable class, by the way, as it is the

stepmother who always drops in for it in the story-books. You'll find

me very easy to deal with, Mr. Hawkehurst, always provided that you

deal in a fair and honourable manner."

"I have no wish to be underhand in my dealings," Valentine said boldly.

And indeed this was the truth. His inclination prompted him to candour,

even with Mr. Sheldon; but that fatal necessity which is the governing

principle of the adventurer's life obliged him to employ the arts of

finesse.